Perking your way to free Amazon gift cards

I really, really love Amazon. Free Amazon gift cards is just the cherry on top. When I needed a better pair of mittens to bike commute in the winter, I didn’t get on the bike and shuffle all over town looking for windproof, waterproof mittens. I searched Amazon and found a pair of highly rated ones almost immediately. Two cold days later, my mittens arrived. What’s better?

I didn’t pay anything for them.

How? I’ve racked up over $1000 in Amazon gift cards using Perk.tv, a service that will pay you for watching ads on your phone. You get paid in points, which you can redeem after certain thresholds for gift cards. Because I love Amazon so much, I always pick the Amazon gift cards. Every 1000 points = $1, and you get 1-4 points per ad, depending on the ad and time of year. Since 7/22/2014, I have earned

Or, about $1433.11. Not bad! That’s $1433 I spent at Amazon that didn’t come out of my wallet. It took me awhile since I started to really get into full-swing with Perk. I started out with one or two phones before I really dived in and set everything up to where it was passive.

How did I accrue this many points?

Through Perk’s own terms of service, you are allowed 5 devices per account. It may not say that now, but it used to, and within the Perk community, it’s the most trusted number of devices. Any more, and you risk being flagged and banned. With 5 devices watching ads all day, every day, you tend to gain quite a bit of points. About 3000-5000 a day, or $3-5/day, $90-150/mo.

What’s more, you can have five accounts per household. If my SO would finally take the plunge and get 5 phones, we could have $180-$300/mo in Amazon gift cards. A family of 5 could make $450-750/mo. I don’t even know how you could spend that at Amazon, but they do have many other gift cards to buy.

I helped my nephew setup his Perk phones, after he bought them on the cheap with his own money. He recouped the cost and is still making money. I thought it was a great lesson in investing, where he had to spend money (on the phones), put in the work (setting them up) to be able to reap the profits (passive income).

How can you get started?

Simple. Sign up at Perk.tv, download their app and start playing ads. You can use up to 5 devices, so maybe now is the time you’ve been waiting for to pull out your old phone stash.

How can you really get started?

If you’re ballsy enough to dive in head-first with five dedicated phones, passively playing Perk ads, follow these steps:

Pretty much, yeah. There are some stipulations you should be worried about.

Really, don’t use more than 5 devices unless you have a legitimate second person.

Earnings are seasonal. You tend to earn more around Christmas/holidays when the ads are a plenty.

When you go to redeem your points, redeem only for $25 and up. This is because, at least for Amazon, you get a 3% discount for the gift card. It’s just a way to conserve those points!

Get the junkiest phones you can. My phones all have cracked screens you can barely see through, but they only cost me $13/each. You only have to set them up once, and then never see them again (if you went fully passive).

You may have to “clean out” the phones every month or so. Just delete the app data for Perk and sign in again once per month. In my experience, though, their app has gotten better lately at not creating a gigantic datastore.

Only get the above guide if you’re comfortable rooting a phone. If you’re comfortable doing that, you’re comfortable doing the rest of the setup.

Enjoy!

Yeah, really. Enjoy! It’s so nice to occasionally remember about Perk, log in to check my points, and $25 or $50 worth of points are waiting to be claimed. It’s as if I just found money lying on the ground! It really helps me pay for all of the essential things I get on Subscribe & Save as well. Dog food, deodorant, toothpaste…all the little things that used to add up, but are now “free”.

By the way, remember my post about return on investment? After spending only $70 on 5 phones and gaining $1433, this venture has given me a 1,947% ROI. And, they’re still going. Every day. All day…until Perk shuts down or it’s somehow not worth it anymore.

11 Responses

Informative post. I have never heard pf PERK. I have an Apple 4 phone we use for streaming video to our TV on occasion. I have no idea how to Root a phone but after reading this I may have to do the research and get comfortable with it. We already buy from Amazon so I could definitely use this as a way to reduce out of pocket costs.

I will have to look into what rooting a phone is. I started doing Swagbucks at the start of this year (blog research) and now I am trying this out. Thanks for the tip! I love simple stuff like this. I’m currently ‘saving’ for a fitness watch and didn’t have the ability to put that into my budget since we are paying off student loans vigorously.

Ah, Swagbucks! I also have two phones going with the various apps. They’re timed to switch between apps about when the daily limit is reached. I’m not sure why I stopped, maybe it was because of the lower payout. Either way, now I’m motivated to set those babies back up! No reason not to.

A friend of mine also uses Perk to purchase airline tickets/miles. It’s a great setup.

Glad you’re able to have some less-guilty purchases! What watch are you eyeing?

TomTom Spark, Audio with GPS. My only hangup is for $300 it doesn’t have phone notifications. I have no desire to text on my wrist or make phone calls, but it would be nice if I could see who texted me while I’m working. That way if it is my husband (someone who rarely texts me during work hours, unless it is important) or my best friend I know I can ignore my phone or not. I’m a teacher, so I don’t have the availability to checkout my phone all that often. But, other than that it does everything else I want!

There is. The TomTom one is supposed to be getting an update early this year and those of us following this watch are hoping that is one of the updates. I am trying to get back into lifting since I am completely healed from a prior injury.

I found it rather amazing as well. My dad does coding and stuff like that. I used to, back in the day, design profiles and code them for people on Neopets. Now, I don’t know my way around coding to save my life. We do a day of coding at the schools I teach at, which is nice but it is sad it is just a day.